


Bird and Bear and Hare and Fish

by Riza



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Character Study, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2149668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riza/pseuds/Riza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your daemon is your soul made living, an organic representation of that spark of life that exists within each of us. From the smallest Karner blue butterfly to a titanic giant squid, almost everyone's daemon is different. Sometimes it's hard to remember that, but when you have a family like the crew at Achievement Hunter, it gets easier.</p><p>Short character studies of each of the daemons of the AH men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Geoff and Scylla

Although humans and their daemons were, by their very nature, inseparable, Geoff and Scylla were unusually close; thick as thieves for their entire childhood, priding themselves on being the school troublemakers. And Geoff had always expected her to end up as a strange shape, like a highly endangered species, or a color variant, or something. It happened on occasion-- many vocations had high percentages of people with specific kinds of daemons. Actors and comedians, for example, commonly had color variants: Tina Fey's blue jay daemon had been dark gray rather than blue, and Patrick Stewart had an albino barred owl that was almost as distinctive-looking as the man himself.

And it wasn't like Geoff was planning on going into comedy; he didn't particularly like to be onstage, and while he was always the clown among his small, close-knit group of friends, he hated being the center of attention. But it was hard _not_ to be everyone's focus when Scylla's favorite activity was “guess which weird/creepy/attention-grabbing shape I am today”.

Every day during middle school, she was some kind of weird animal that nobody had ever heard of. Monday, she was a Roseate Spoonbill, a pink bird that would've been gorgeous, if it wasn't for the massive flat beak that she was constantly smacking Geoff with whenever he did something dumb (which was often). Tuesday she was a kangaroo rat, making all the fifth-grade girls coo delightedly when they spotted her in his pocket, and shriek in terror when she became a vampire bat on Wednesday. On Thursday she went through so many bizarre shapes that Geoff didn't bother looking them all up-- it would have taken the better part of an afternoon. And once, in seventh grade, she went through twenty different species of Asian snakes in a week and a half.

He'd never really thought to question why she shifted so much. It just seemed natural. Why be a boring raccoon or squirrel when Scylla could be a sun bear with a Gene Simmons-esque tongue and a Batman logo across her chest? Life was _way_ more interesting when your daemon took weird forms. It caught other people off guard...and, yeah, it kept them at a distance sometimes. But it was better that way, safer, especially in middle school. 

Fast forward to three months into his senior year of high school, when he woke up Tuesday morning and there was Scylla, curled up at the end of his bed as some kind of scrawny, fluffy...dog. Despite the fact that she went through several dozen forms a year, Geoff had never seen her as a dog for longer than a few minutes. But judging from the warm, Scylla-shaped wrinkle of blankets, she'd stayed in that form for nearly the whole night. 

And somehow he knew, instantly, that she'd never change again. Why bother? It felt right, like finding a really great position while falling asleep and not wanting to move at all, or stretching after a long period of sitting still. 

But what _was_ she?

They spent the next few hours looking her up in various encyclopedias and daemon guides, things they'd hardly bothered with growing up. Fortunately, her polka-dot coat and distinctive shape made her easy to identify: _Crocuta crocuta_ , the spotted hyena, an animal that technically was closer to a cat than a dog in evolutionary terms. Geoff didn't put much stock in daemon self-help books or personality charts, but a lot of what he read made sense to him. Hyenas had a reputation for being cruel scavengers, when in reality they were extremely smart and-- for a wild animal-- remarkably hard-working. They killed most of what they ate, as opposed to looting it from other predators. They were pack animals, but often varied between working alone or in pairs, and being extremely social.

He could still remember the moment he realized exactly what it meant to be settled. It was early in the morning, and they knew they would be late for school that day, but neither of them cared. Geoff had his mom's copy of _Predator Daemons for Dummies_ open to the page on hyenas. He was reading through the section on social behavior when Scylla, who up until that moment had been unusually quiet, nudged his arm while avoiding his gaze. “Geoff?”

“What's up, Scyl?”

“...I'm sorry I'm like this.”

Geoff looked up so fast he strained his neck. “Scyl, no, it's not you at all! I-- jeez, no, I'm just surprised, that's all. I love that you're a hyena. I think it's the perfect shape and I don't give a shit what anyone else says.”

“Do you think they _will_ say something?”

“If they do, they'll have another think coming. Come on, Scylla, look at this whole section. Hyenas are clever as dicks, and tough as hell. You could rip their throats out if you wanted. Seriously, I can't believe _I'm_ the one remembering Ms. Carolina's whole class on accepting everyone and their daemons for who they are-- we'll send them her way if they say anything about you. And then we'll beat their ass.”

Scylla gave his face a lick. “We will?”

“Damn right we will.” He scratched her behind the ears, and she grinned at him with a mouthful of sharp teeth. “Really, Scyl, I love you just the way you are. Don't ever change.”

The rest of the years seemed to go by in a flash; it felt like hardly any time had passed when they founded Rooster Teeth with Burnie, Joel, Matt and Gus. The next thirteen years at RT was the best job anyone could hope for. And creating Achievement Hunter was even better, especially for a close-knit pair like them. Their office was small enough that they didn't have to worry about overextending their range. When Scylla was bored while Geoff was editing, she would nudge his legs and make him wrestle with her for a while. If he was too busy, she could scurry over to Ryan or Michael's daemons and roll around with them instead. Hyenas were pack animals at heart, and it felt good to be no farther than a few feet from their friends and family.

And after twenty years, Geoff had never stopped loving the way her tongue lolled out of her mouth in a doggy smile, or how her bristly fur stood up in a mohawk when he ruffled her hair, or the way her big bat-like ears swiveled in two different directions made her head look crooked. It was impossible not to fall in love with Scylla at the sight of her shaggy tail thumping against the carpet, or the sound of her yelping bark of a laugh; Barbara could never resist the urge to tell Geoff that he laughed like a hyena. Their giggles could be heard across the building, echoing each other, making it impossible for everyone else to resist joining in.

Their life was good, it was _fun_ , and Geoff wouldn't have it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never liked the idea of people settling right when they hit puberty, because I don't think they'll be that same person in eight or nine years. You're worlds different at eighteen or nineteen than you were when you were a preteen; I didn't figure out who I was until I was twenty. I doubt my daemon, if I had one, would have even been _able_ to settle because I was such a chaotic mess when I was thirteen. So for the purposes of this fic, people generally settle when they hit college age (between 18 and 22).
> 
> Please come and chat with me about our favorite nerds (and about all things HDM-related) over at my [tumblr!](http://digital-waterfall.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Here is how I picture [Korisley](http://m3.i.pbase.com/g4/46/619046/2/60894503.IMG_6699.jpg), and [Scylla](http://www.realbirder.com/NamibiaD/Fauna/SpottedHyena.jpg). Here's [Dyneth](http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e6/b6/81/e6b681ea7ba763e2341322861983642d.jpg), with a human for comparison.


	2. Gavin and Korisley

Gavin, contrary to most people's first impressions of him, is, in fact, intelligent. Very intelligent-- really, he is. He acts like a dumbass most of the time, and he knows he comes across as one, but it's easier that way. People underestimate him that way, which means he impresses them more easily _and_ he gets to do less work. Burnie and Raena figured this out a long time ago, much to Gavin's irritation; it's a lot harder to to fake being dumb in front of them now. Even Jack had started giving Gavin more credit after years of working with him in Achievement Hunter: more than once, Naira had smacked Korisley upside the head for being a little shit on purpose.

So nobody was really surprised when Gavin settled as a game bird. Korisley had been lazy for a daemon when it came to shifting, changing when she absolutely had to. It wasn't uncommon to see her remain in a single shape for days at a time. When he was seventeen and she had been a mink for over a week, his mum had been convinced that Korisley settled and just didn't want to admit it, despite Gavin's protests. A year later, she'd started taking exclusively bird forms, echoing his squawks during Grifball matches and dive-bombing the TV. 

And eventually, one morning, Kori had been a spruce grouse for almost a week and a half when Gavin figured it out. 

He set the controller down and looked her over; she gazed lazily back at him from beady black eyes, clicking her beak.

“Is that it, then?”

“Is what it?” She waggled her brown feathery head-crest at him mischievously.

“You're settled?”

“Feels like it.”

“Right. Cool.”

And that was it. Their parents were over the moon that he'd finally settled after years of “faking them out”, as his mum phrased it, but neither Gavin nor Korisley gave it any thought at all. Everyone acted like settling was a big deal, but as far as they were concerned, it didn't make a difference. It wasn't as if Kori had shifted very often before she settled. Maybe now that she had an actual reason to remain in one form, people would stop giving her odd looks. Dan had given him some crap about settling as a North American bird, instead of a proper British partridge or black grouse-- but that quickly came to an end when Gavin pointed out that Dan's own Alsret was an American pika. 

Eventually, a few weeks after they'd settled, he and Kori got off their arses to look up some actual information about her new form. Spruce grouses were almost universally considered to be extremely stupid birds, called “fool's hens” in some areas, which made Kori burst out laughing: they _would_ end up as one of the few animals with an insulting nickname. 

But some of their more reputable sources claimed that this was actually an unfair nickname. _Dendragapus canadensis,_ like all grouses, were extremely good at camouflage. It was to their benefit to stand as still as possible to blend in when predators approached. If one got too close, the grouse could burst out of the scrub suddenly, startling their predator and buying them a precious few seconds to fly away. That way, they conserved energy while also avoiding an early death.

When they had finished reading, Korisley started to giggle again. Gavin cocked an eye at her, scratching the speckled feathers on her chest. “What're you on about?”

“It's just...” She clicked her beak again, trailing off. “The universe knows us too well. Read it over again. That's me _and_ you, Gav-- lazy for a good reason. But we know what we're doing. How long have you been filming stuff, now? People think you're a tit, and that I'm ugly, when they meet us at first. But they'll learn.”

Gavin winced. “Blimey, Kori, don't sugar-coat it or anything.”

She nudged her head under his hand so he could scratch her chin feathers more easily. “You don't pay me to say it nicely. Wouldn't be much of a point in having me around, then, eh?”  
  
“Fair enough.”

And they did learn. _They_ being his coworkers and best friends, his second family-- everyone who worked at Rooster Teeth. Lindsay started calling them both out on the podcast for being intentionally stupid, and even Geoff and Michael occasionally defended Gavin when he was trying to argue his point in his usual inarticulate fashion. They both learned to channel their laziness to use it in a more productive fashion. Gavin became the goofball, the comic foil to Ray and Michael's straight-men personas, the one all the fans saw as the lazy stooge. Behind the scenes, when it came to editing and uploading and filmmaking in general, he was as dedicated as any of them.

Korisley's shape made her ideally suited for pranks, something that all RT employees took very seriously. Unfortunately for Kori, there weren't many shrubs or young pines for her to hide in. So she contented herself with sneaking under Jack's and Ryan's desks, and then “flushing” when they got too close, scaring the living daylights out of them. 

(They had tried to do it to Gus before. Once. Sivera, Gus's daemon, had stepped straight in front of Korisley, who had screeched to a halt and frantically back-winged when the six-hundred-pound moose appeared out of nowhere. Gus had peered around his monitor, met Gavin's terrified gaze, looked him dead in the eyes for five or six seconds, and went back to work.)

Despite all the stress, and the hard work, and the endless fan complaints, it was worth it. All of it. Every day was like a free trip to a crazy amusement park for the two of them. They could be themselves one hundred percent of the time, and none of their coworkers ever gave them shit for it. (Well, okay, they did, constantly. But it wasn't serious, not the way it sometimes was back home.) Austin was their second home, even though it was a thousand miles from the place where he grew up. And neither Gavin nor Korisley regretted it even once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This summer my job involved working with and around a lot of spruce grouses. They really aren't as dumb as everyone thinks.
> 
> Also, they're cute as nobs.
> 
> I've never liked the idea of people settling right when they hit puberty, because I don't think they'll be that same person in eight or nine years. You're worlds different at eighteen or nineteen than you were when you were a preteen; I didn't figure out who I was until I was twenty. I doubt my daemon, if I had one, would have even been _able_ to settle because I was such a chaotic mess when I was thirteen. So for the purposes of this fic, people generally settle when they hit college age (between 18 and 22).
> 
> Please come and chat with me about our favorite nerds (and about all things HDM-related) over at my [tumblr!](http://digital-waterfall.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Here is how I picture [Korisley](http://m3.i.pbase.com/g4/46/619046/2/60894503.IMG_6699.jpg), and [Scylla](http://www.realbirder.com/NamibiaD/Fauna/SpottedHyena.jpg). Here's [Dyneth](http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e6/b6/81/e6b681ea7ba763e2341322861983642d.jpg), with a human for comparison.


	3. Ryan and Dyneth

Ryan had always expected Dyneth to end up as some kind of fairly calm and steady animal. Probably not a predator; he was too shy for that, even as a theater kid. Dyneth had never been a bully. She'd always hung back, whispering to Ryan directly instead of addressing the other daemons around her. And he was a late settler, which didn't help, either. Ever since they were seventeen, Dyneth had begun to take on fairly routine forms: a horse, a cow, a giant panda when she was feeling particularly cheeky. Which was often-- Ryan himself was quiet and a little nerdy as a kid, but smart as anything, and his cleverness usually manifested itself in Dyneth's slightly maniacal antics.

So he'd always expected her to be some kind of large, placid animal. But then they hit eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and eventually she no longer shifted in public to avoid attracting people's attention. Twenty was usually the cut-off age for your daemon settling, and Ryan had always looked older than he actually was.

He'd found this out the hard way. When he turned twenty-one, he and Dyneth had gone out with a bunch of friends to celebrate being able to legally drink. At the pub, they had met a couple of geeky-looking young women, reasonably attractive and wearing shirts with dumb math jokes on them. Of course Ryan and his buddies had invited them to come along; they would've been crazy not to. And at the beginning of the night, Dyneth was a Nubian goat with long floppy ears. A few shots and several beers and cocktails later, after they had begun to stagger a little, she had changed without thinking, curling herself around Ryan's neck as a ferret to avoid having to walk upright anymore. 

Their friends knew, of course, that Ryan and Dyneth weren't settled. But the people they had met at the bar had absolutely no idea, and that newfound revelation, plus the alcohol, made the rest of that night one of the most awkward birthdays of Ryan's life. The pretty brunette with the triforce tattoo refused to make eye contact with him, and her armadillo daemon spent the rest of the night crouched nervously by her ankles. The other brunette did her best to make halting conversation, while the blonde's voice became twice as hearty and bubbly, to the point that Ryan couldn't stand it anymore. It was too damn awkward. He made a couple of halting excuses and stumbled out the door, Dyneth curling her face into his neck. 

As soon as they were out of the bar, Dyneth scuttled down to the ground and became a donkey, leaning heavily against him. Ryan rested a hand between her ears, sighing. He was used to it by now; his predicament was not actually as uncommon as everyone seemed to think. Most people hid it well-- and so could he, usually. It only became a problem when alcohol lowered his inhibitions. 

It usually didn't hurt this much, either, having other people react that way. He leaned on Dyneth in turn, feeling her comforting weight against his side, and rubbed at his temples. _Damn it._

“It's okay,” said Dyneth, flicking her tail. “We'll settle soon. Maybe in a few days, maybe in a few years. It'll happen.” 

“I know.” Ryan passed a hand over his eyes. “I wouldn't be feeling it like this if I hadn't had those damn White Russians earlier.”

“And the beer, and the Old Fashioneds, and that one Long Island Iced Tea...”

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in, go ahead.”

She snorted and nudged his hand. “Ah, screw 'em. Being unsettled is more fun, anyway, everyone says so. How would I keep you warm if I was stuck as an ass all the time?” Just to prove her point, she changed into a Himalayan rabbit and hopped onto his head, curling her feet behind his ears to keep him warm.

“We live in Texas, Dyneth,” Ryan pointed out. “All you're doing is just making me more hot.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Jeez, Rye, how do you sweat more during the night than during the day?” 

“Everyone's a critic.”

Dyneth hopped down and became a brown alpaca, strutting along next to him. “I know it sucks right now, but it'll get better. I don't give a shit what I settle as. Let 'em stare at me for as long as they want, I don't care. I wonder if they'd be as judgmental if one of their best friends hadn't settled yet...”

“That's probably happened already,” Ryan pointed out. “It's not as if people like us generally advertise that we haven't settled. How would their friends be able to tell?”

“That makes them doubly cruel. How can someone be so ignorant? What if one of _their_ best friends was in our position? How would it make that blonde bitch feel if she discovered her brother still hadn't settled? Would _she_ talk to him like a five-year-old?”

“You don't have to tell _me_ that,” Ryan said, carefully stepping off the curb; he was slowly beginning to sober up, but that third White Russian had really done a number on him, despite his size. “I already know you’re right. But I'm too buzzed to have a conversation about feelings right now...can this wait till later?”

Dyneth gave a little alpaca hum. “It's not like we ever really discuss feelings anyway. Whatever. Let's go home and puke and go to bed.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

* * * * *  
In the end, he was twenty-five. 

No one had expected Dyneth to settle the way she did. Sure, everyone's told when their kids that they're all _different_ , and those differences are what makes them special, and that nobody should ever expect one thing from their daemon because they're just going to be disappointed. If you don't like your daemon, there's a problem, because it means you don't like something about yourself. And it wasn't that Ryan was disappointed about Dyneth's form-- not really. He was just...surprised, and so was most of his family and friends.

She had settled while Ryan was working on a particularly difficult passage in his job at the theater. The daemons of young actors often shifted to suit the scene, and acting was one of the few jobs where Dyneth's ability to change despite the fact that they were in their early twenties was considered beneficial rather than off-putting. It had been going well, too. He'd been learning how to work with Ajax a side project, and it had gotten him more job offers in the span of two months than he'd ever received since graduating with a degree in drama. So much so that he'd been seriously considering quitting his job at the theater and working with a startup in Tampa instead. 

That was what was weighing on his mind as he rehearsed. As great as it felt to be wanted for once, it was seriously distracting when he was trying to get off-book. His character was nobody particularly special-- a name he had long since forgotten-- but he was evil and dramatic, with a raven daemon to suit his cunning personality. After an hour and a half of repeated line-by-line read-throughs with Dyneth, Ryan was ready to set his script on fire and forget everything about this character. 

“...if you would only look outside of yourself, you'd see a wide world of-- no, a _whole world_ of-- fuck!”

Dyneth nuzzled him with her beak. “This phrasing is weird, I don't like it either. Let's try again. Third time's the charm?”

“Third time my ass,” Ryan muttered, tossing his script on the couch. “I've gotta take a break, Dyneth, my brain's worn out. It's gonna start leaking out of my ears if we keep this up.”

“Heh, fair enough.” Dyneth hopped off of the coffee table and landed on the arm of the couch, nudging the remote towards him. “See if the Simpsons are on yet, would you?”

“Sure.” Their TV was staticky as anything, with no cable and a cathode ray screen that had permanent plasma burn from the time they left it on overnight, but it came through enough to be heard. “Can't you stop being a raven for a while, though? I don't wanna think about acting anymore, not for a while, anyway.”

For the first time that Ryan could remember, Dyneth didn't have a snappy comeback. She was utterly silent. When he looked over at her, she had her head dipped down, pecking absently at the fake leather under her feet. She wouldn't meet his eyes.

_Oh jeez._

“Dyneth?”

“I heard you.”

“...Are you gonna change?”

 _Tap, tap, tap._ “I don't think so.”

Ryan's emotions couldn't seem to decide what they were doing. One half of him was determined not to care, that settling was a bullshit milestone anyway, that if everybody else cared so damn much then they should analyze their own daemons till the cows came home, as long as they left _him_ alone. 

The other half was caught between delighted shrieking and a vague sense of sadness. They'd spent their whole life like this-- how could they even imagine being “normal”? How would Dyneth stand being trapped in one form? He'd almost been sure that they'd be spending the rest of their life unsettled, that they'd be one of those rare freaks of nature whose daemons never chose one form and were condemned to hide their true nature from everyone they knew.

He reached over and put his hand under her head, stopping her from tapping at the cushion. He focused on their bond, on the Rusakov particles that connected humans with their daemons, to see exactly what Dyneth was feeling. She was scared, yes; scared of how her shape would be perceived by others, and scared of losing the feature that had defined them for so long. 

But she was also relieved. It felt like a lifelong itch had finally been scratched. Changing forms all the time had been fun, but it was time to be an adult now. They were moving on with their life. 

“I think I'm gonna take that job in Tampa, Dye.”

Dyneth craned her neck to allow him better access to the shorter feathers. “Mmkay.”

“...Are you okay with this?”

Her voice was muffled as she stuck her head under her wing.. “Yeah. Just...I dunno what we're gonna tell Mom and Dad.”

“We'll tell them everything. Come on, they're the _last_ people we should be concerned about. They'll understand. They're gonna be happy that we've settled, they won't care what form you are. And _I_ think you're gorgeous.”

“I bet you say that to all the ladies.” Ryan caught a glimpse of shiny black eyes under feathers as Dyneth peeked out from under her wing. 

“Don't hate the player, hate the game, Dye...”

“You're a little shit sometimes, you know that?”

“You're one to talk!”

“Shut up and get your phone out so we can call Mom. She'll be pissed if we don't tell her first.”

* * * * * 

In the end, it did work out. They bounced from place to place, never really leaving the South; despite the fact that ravens were more suited to northern climates, Dyneth claimed to love the heat, and the weather reminded them both of home. They stayed in Georgia for a while, working at various tech jobs, developing a love/hate relationship with personal computers and Perl, and never losing sight of palm trees or the sun.

After Georgia came a wife, who loved animals and worked as a vet. Then came Tampa, the only decent area in Florida that wasn't the Keys. The inside smelled of cigars; the coast was permeated with a strange combination of sea breeze and dried-up oyster beds. Dyneth loved the rotting fish that washed up on shore, while Ryan loved the afternoon squalls that rolled in between three and five P.M. every day without fail. All in all, it wasn't their favorite city, but there was a quirky and historical quality to it that most other towns just didn't have.

Then came Corpus Christi, which he and Dyneth swore never to speak of again.

Then came Austin, and working behind-the-scenes for Rooster Teeth, and finding themselves becoming more and more deeply entrenched with a company unlike any other. He became the new tech guru, the one everyone went running to when they couldn't get a mod to work, or when their UPS was having a meltdown. Despite the nature of Rooster Teeth, it could have-- _would_ have-- been just another job if Dyneth hadn't convinced him to take up Geoff's offer to join them in playing Mari0. 

From there, it was just a short downhill slide to Capture the Tower, weekly Let's Plays, VS, Edgar, Ryan the Guy, Haywood Airlines, Professor Port...and before he knew it, he was a full-fledged on-screen member of Achievement Hunter, with his own spot in the office and everything. 

It didn't take long for Dyneth to make alliances with everyone in the building, despite Ryan's generally reserved nature. She and Korisley would hide under Geoff and Jack's desks, bursting out when the latter two walked into the room, scaring the shit out of them both. More than once, she'd fooled the entire room into thinking she was Naira-- Jack's daemon-- leading to some spectacular clusterfucks.

And on occasion, whenever Ryan was busy fixing a server, or playing nice for the public, or doing something that meant he had to at least _appear_ like a normal human being...Dyneth would let loose a bit of their inner Mad King. Just a little, just enough to throw everyone else off, so that they weren't sure if she was kidding or not. 

Because, after all, they were actors at heart. And what fun would it be with a raven daemon if you couldn't scare people a little?


	4. Jack and Naira

There was never a question as to how Naira would settle. Many families had certain types of daemons that were passed down through their descendants, and dogs popped up like clockwork in the Patillo clan. It tended to skip generations: his grandfather had a coyote daemon, and his great-great-grandfather had a Border collie, so Jack figured it was only natural that Naira would end up as some species of dog. It went without saying that the Patillos were proud of their Canidae heritage the same way they took pride in being fifth-generation Austinites.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when Naira, in an attempt to make herself into a sort of pillow for Jack as he sprawled on the couch watching TV, shifted into the form of a large white rabbit with black-tipped ears. 

It hadn’t bothered him much. His sister teased him a little bit—her own daemon was a black-backed jackal— and his grandfather acted as though he had disappointed the family, but after doing some research, Jack decided he honestly didn’t give a shit. Studies had shown, time and time again, that there was no genetic link among daemon shapes, because daemons had no genes to speak of. The form came from the traits of the human, which were-- sometimes-- hereditary. It wasn’t like Naira had chosen to be an Arctic hare. It just happened. Yes, there were societies and therapists who claimed to be able to “change” people’s daemons, but he knew better than to believe in any of that nonsense. 

People looked at Naira and thought she was a sweet little bunny, without realizing that hares—not rabbits-- were tough as nails. Arctic hares in particular had to be, to survive the harsh tundra. They were incredibly fast and willing to beat the hell out of anything that fought with them. On occasion, when Jack had been fed up with some member of his family giving him shit for having a bunny for a daemon, he would send them an email containing a single YouTube link. No subject, no message body; just a video of two hares sparring during mating season.

Besides, Naira was perfect for Texas summers. Her white fur reflected the sunlight, keeping her cool even on hundred-degree days, of which there were many. And how many other daemons were just the right size to act as a footrest during long days spent editing videos rife with Technical Difficulties screens? 

Naira was his, she was perfect, and he wouldn’t trade her for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never liked the idea of people settling right when they hit puberty, because I don't think they'll be that same person in eight or nine years. You're worlds different at eighteen or nineteen than you were when you were a preteen; I didn't figure out who I was until I was twenty. I doubt my daemon, if I had one, would have even been _able_ to settle because I was such a chaotic mess when I was thirteen. So for the purposes of this fic, people generally settle when they hit college age (between 18 and 22).
> 
> Please come and chat with me about our favorite nerds (and about all things HDM-related) over at my [tumblr!](http://digital-waterfall.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Here is how I picture [Korisley](http://m3.i.pbase.com/g4/46/619046/2/60894503.IMG_6699.jpg), and [Scylla](http://www.realbirder.com/NamibiaD/Fauna/SpottedHyena.jpg). Here's [Dyneth](http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e6/b6/81/e6b681ea7ba763e2341322861983642d.jpg), with a human for comparison. [](http://animalsadda.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Arctic-Hare-3.jpg>This</a>%20is%20Naira.)


End file.
